


Naming and Knowing

by flickerthenflare



Series: Broadway and Baby 'verse [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Humor, M/M, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:57:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerthenflare/pseuds/flickerthenflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt and Blaine learn that grocery shopping and baby naming shouldn't be done on an empty stomach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Naming and Knowing

The fruits and vegetables section of the grocery store makes Kurt and Blaine sentimental now. With a fetal development chart that compares their baby’s size to produce and nothing else to call her, Kurt and Blaine settle on using affectionately fruity nicknames. She’s grown from Poppy Seed to Sweet Pea to Blueberry and beyond. This week she’s Rutabaga. On a carefully planned pre-show afternoon with a brief window for chores and enjoying each other’s company, Kurt and Blaine cause a scene at the grocery store by crouching down to admire how tiny and adorable the grapes are. Blaine lovingly strokes a peach. Kurt cradles a watermelon to see how it feels.

“How do you feel about Kiwi?” Blaine asks.

“To eat or name our child?” The options Kurt lays out speak to how well they know each other.

“Both, possibly.” Blaine examines a kiwi before putting it in their basket. “If Gwyneth can have Apple, I can have Kiwi. Or I think Kiki is on the same level of adorableness and it’s actually a name.”

“Kiki as in ‘Let’s have a’?” Kurt snaps his fingers for effect.

“Does that make you more or less inclined to say yes?”

“I think I’m hungry enough that Kiwi sounds like the better option. How is it that I never realize I’m hungry until I’m at the grocery store?”

One of the keys of marriage is realizing it isn’t helpful for Blaine to point out that he asked Kurt if he wanted a snack before they left for the store. Blaine decided to forgo the snack as well, despite knowing full well he was hungry, and now he looks at the produce with more than just parental longing. He adds a few more kiwis and celmentines to their basket that will make a nice snack when they get home.

“The last week on the chart is Jackfruit,” Kurt says. “If we are settling on a fruit name, I’m not sure I want Jackfruit to stick for the rest of her life. It’s barely more charming than Rutabaga. Can you just imagine? ‘Oh, is Jack short for Jonathan?’ ‘Nope, my two dumb gay dads named me _Jackfruit_.’”

Blaine smiles at Kurt’s impression of their unborn daughter that sounds a little like Kurt’s impression of him. “And this is why we need an alternate fruit, so we don’t get ourselves into a Jackfruit debacle.”

“She could always come early and be Winter Melon. I kind of like that one. First name Winter, middle name Melon.”

Blaine shakes his head. “Her birthday will be in summer. That’s confusing.” The closest Blaine came to wanting to keep one of the weekly nicknames was Green Olive, hailing it as a great gender neutral option. Kurt vetoed it based on his opinion of both the food and the color. 

“You know what else is confusing? Winter, Summer, and Autumn are all names, but Spring isn’t. We could be trendsetters by claiming the last remaining season.” Kurt’s hands flourish on ‘trendsetters.’

“But her birthday will be in _summer_.” Blaine loves unconventional names, but he draws the line at complete nonsense. Her name isn’t supposed to be ironic. It’s supposed to be special.

"Still better than fruit.”

"If we tell Rachel we're naming the baby Spring, Rachel’s going to be singing 'I Feel So Much Spring Within Me' for the next few months, and it's a beautiful song but she should be resting in her off time, not staging a one-woman choral finale."

"Are we telling Rachel what we decide?" Kurt sounds surprised but not upset.

"If we ever do, yes." It doesn’t seem likely. Coming up with names has been their idea of play for years, right up there with celebrity makeovers and surprise serenades. Toronto. Alfredo. Tracy and Hepburn. It will have to stop being a game soon, now that they don’t have years but months to reach a final conclusion.

"And everyone else can wait until it's too late for their opinions." Kurt nods decidedly. "I'll tell her about the ones we don’t pick too, because 'Jackfruit Berry' is too much fun to say to resist. Really she should steal the fruit concept. Blue. Marion. Rasp. Huckle? It’s genius. Kanye West would be jealous of the options.”

"We'll save it for her," Blaine agrees knowing full well the chances of Rachel using any of their silly names when she's pregnant for her sake instead of theirs are slim. 

“Probably for the best. If we actually name Rutabaga after produce, there are two jokes we're going to get really tired of." Kurt holds up his fingers to count. "One: something about ‘fruit of our loins,’ which means people are going to say ‘loins’ unironically. Two: fruits having fruits. Oh, and three: one day she's going to fart and be called 'Tootie Fruitie' for a cruel amount of time."

“Okay, all good things to avoid. And her name should mean something to us anyway. That should rule out food options.” They’ve come up with so many nicknames, but nothing real. It’s all been the fruit snacks of names – names that seem like they might be good but there’s nothing of substance there. As charmed as Blaine is by some of their more unusual options, their affection for a name should stick longer than an afternoon if it has meaning.

“You’re underestimating how much Gelato means to me.” At a look from Blaine, Kurt tempers his teasing. “Point taken. And if we _are_ going to name our child after food, it has to be classy food. We don’t want other people to associate her with heartburn.”

“Remember that afternoon _you_ spent insisting that Cayenne sounded more like a name than a food and I had to tell you we weren’t starting the next generation of Spice Girls?”

“Kale isn’t any cuter!” Kurt laughs at himself. "Fine. If we’re making naming stipulations, I want the perfect coffee order name, where she could place the order and no one else in line would have the same name, but they'd still put something close to accurate on the cup." 

"That's a tall order," Blaine muses. "More than that: it's at least a grande."

"You're thinking of names we can steal from Starbucks, aren't you?" 

"Hmm, Mochaccino..." Blaine sighs dreamily. He shakes it off. “No. Mochaccino's not actually a good name for a person, but I really want one right now, and I really want our baby, and I'm conflating the two."

"Maybe we shouldn't try to come up with names when we're hungry." Kurt’s stomach rumbles in agreement. 

They giggle their way to the next section of the store, from produce to dairy. Blaine pulls Kurt back when he realizes where they’re heading. “Let’s skip past the cheeses for the sake of our child.”

Kurt scoffs at the idea of forgoing cheese. He offers Blaine the basket handle with a squeeze of his hand. “Wait here and let’s both not think about which cheeses would make decent names.”

Blaine fondly watches Kurt methodically gathers his selection of cheeses from a distance and tries not to let his mind wander to all the cheese names they could use if they wanted to drop Fruit but keep Jack – Monterey, Pepper, Cheddar.

Making plans together soothes Blaine, even if those plans aren’t any loftier than what they’re going to have for dinner this week and talking idly about a decision they don’t have to make today. It’s that little bit of fun on a busy day in a busy week, basking in the time that’s theirs. Sometimes Blaine still doesn’t believe he gets to have this life. He gets the family he wanted, complete with unnamed child on the way. And Kurt is going to love Rutabaga so much.

“Okay, we need more rice, tofu, probably ice cream, and a good name still, and the I think we’re done.” Kurt dumps his acquisitions in the basket and then checks the grocery list on his phone. “Do you have something more dignified than fruit to offer me for a name?”

“Fruit has plenty of dignity. It’s one of the more dignified food options.”

“More meaningful, then.” Kurt bumps Blaine’s shoulder affectionately as he takes their basket back, only indicating how indulgent he’s being with a small smile.

In return, Blaine says nothing about the packaged cookies Kurt dumps in their cart next. "We could draw from people we know that are good role models who also have names worth stealing."

"That's sure to cause drama."

"Not our close friends, but like Jan and Liz."

"Which one?" 

"Oh no." Blaine covers his mouth and chokes back his laugh after one guffaw escapes at the answer his mind supplies. He regrets his suggestion immediately. “That’s terrible.”

"What?"

“Jiz.”

Kurt blinks a moment. "Okay. Clearly naming this child is up to me, because no way are we naming her that."

Blaine feels terrible for cracking himself up so much that the words struggle to get out, but it’s too funny to stop. "It - it'll be a full circle moment, from jizz to Jiz with one Z."

"Like Liza with a Z? Don’t you dare ruin Liza with a jizz joke."

"Liza is a delightful name, and you met her for half a second which is an added bonus that almost makes her count as a friend-slash-acquaintance when we say how we came by the name,” Blaine says mostly to make amends for besmirching Kurt’s affection for Liza as a name possibility. "Isn't there a song about Liza?"

"It's not the kindest. If we're going to pick a name that appears in a song, it should be kind."

Blaine oohs at the possibility. "We like music even more than we like food."

Blaine has always been better at singing his emotions than saying them. Becoming a dad is such an enormous feeling that he’ll need all the help he can get to coherently express _something_ to his kid.

“It would have to be both a name and a song we don’t get tired of, since it’ll basically become her theme song.”

“ _Cecilia, you're breaking my heart / You're shaking my confidence daily_ ,” Blaine croons.

“Not that one. ‘Roxanne’ is about a hooker, so scratch that even if there is a _Moulin Rouge_ connection. ‘Sexy Sadie’ is too creepy to even contemplate, no matter how nice the Beatles connection is. ‘Mustang Sally’ is about a car.”

“Valerie?” Blaine suggests. “The name is pretty if you don’t listen to the words.”

“I’m sure there’s a ‘ginger’ Filipina out there somewhere, but probably not one related to us.”

“Your issue with Valerie is that she’ll have the wrong hair color? Not the mention of jail and the drunk driving inspiration?”

“ _That’s_ what it’s about?” Kurt puts on his familiar look of judgment. “Veto times a million. I feel like I need to call up Santana and Brittany and demand they explain themselves. If we wanted to name our baby after a booze-hound, we’d call her April Rhodes and be done with it.”

Blaine wracks his memory for other names featured in songs. “ _Hey there, Delilah, what’s it like in New York City…_ ”

Blaine gets a few looks for bursting into song in the frozen food aisle for a second time. The ratio of pleased to irritated isn’t bad enough to make him stop. Kurt’s is adoring, and that’s the look that matters the most.

“I like that one. At least it’s about trying to make a life as an artist, not about a masturbating sex fiend, ‘Darling Nikki.’”

Blaine grins. “Or ‘If You Seek Amy’? But it’s still gonna be a hard sell for my catholic relatives to say I named my baby after a biblical femme fatale.”

“Don’t care. Add Delilah to the list. It’s the best by a long shot. What’s with all the really sexual songs with some poor woman’s name in them? Do their mothers not listen to the radio?”

“Delilah’s winning in that regard. It’s just so melancholy. No one’s really just _happy_ when singing out someone else’s name, are they?” Blaine says. “Except for ‘Maria _._ ’ I think Tony’s happy.”

“You have the cutest rendition.” Kurt’s eyes get lost in the memory of high school.

Blaine tests how it feels with its new purpose in mind, bursting into song yet again. “ _The most beautiful sound I ever heard_.”

Kurt affectionately mouths, “Show off!” at him, looking as besotted as the lyrics to the song.

Blaine has to pause to coo before going any further with the song. It fits. It may originally be a romantic song – most are – but it transcends just that interpretation. The awe remains. And _West Side Story_ has a soft spot in Blaine’s heart thanks to Kurt. The music reminds him of congratulations roses and rooting for each other and things being hard and them making mistakes but it turning out wonderful in the end, of Kurt graciously running lines and singing opposite Blaine when Blaine worried he didn’t have it perfect, and one song in particular that promises ‘ _only death will part us now’_ reminds him how completely besotted he still is.

“The extended family will like that more than Delilah for sure.” Blaine’s not sure if that’s a pro or con. But his aunt Mary Ann, who lives in Manila most of the time and who he sees rarely but adores, will be thrilled at how close Rutabaga’s potential future name is to hers.

“Still don’t care. What matters is the two of us making mostly appropriate song choices.” ~~~~

Blaine cracks a smile at the gentle ribbing. “Does that mean we’re actually considering Maria?” ~~~~

“I think so? What do you think?” Kurt asks.

It’s not the kind of name he gravitates toward, or anything they’ve considered so far. It’s an actual name, and a popular one at that. But it’s the name Blaine has the strongest emotional attachment to so far.

Before Blaine can respond, Kurt adds, “If we’re going with such a popular name, we’ll have to give her the most ridiculous middle name to make up for it. Maybe we do need a few nicknames…”

“Somehow I think that will be easy for us.” It’s a thought that Blaine likes at the moment. They’ll see if it sticks. Or maybe, if they’re already contemplating nicknames instead of calling her by the name they give her, they’re back to square one. Either way, they’ve reached the end of what the two of them can carry home from the store alone. Blaine steers Kurt toward checkout. “Let’s talk about it over lunch.”


End file.
